Ps. 66.16-20 (silver-tongue)

Come / listen / all you who fear God
and I will tell you / what he has done / for me.
I cried out to him / with my mouth
but praise / was on the tip / of my tongue.
Had I been guilty / in my heart,
My Lord / would not have heard me.
But / God did hear me
he listened / to my voice / in prayer
Blessed / be God
who has not / turned away my prayer
or his loyal-love /from me. 

It may be that in these concluding lines we come to see that the psalmist is, in fact, the king, and that the deliverance that he is singing praise over is his military deliverance from enemies. This need not be the case, but it does tend to cohere well with the rest of the psalm and its emphasis on God’s deliverance in the form (or, effect) of “cowering” his enemies (vs. 3). The king as liturgical center—his call to “come and see” his story—is also fitting. Further, the direction of the psalm as it narrows down to an individual (from “all the earth” to the Red Sea to “us” to “I”), may also give credence to this being the king. Rather than funneling down into an ‘individual’ it is focusing upon the deliverance provided to the king. In this way the psalm remains ‘epic’ in its focus and the “I” could still, very easily be, “us” (in that, any deliverance of the king-shepherd is a deliverance of his subjects-flock). That entire preliminary aside, these concluding lines offer some unique insights. First, the psalmist calls upon “those who fear God” to, pilgrim-like, “come and see” what he has to say about God’s deliverance. However, the focus of his recounting turns, in large part, on the prayer he offered and on possibility of its being heard. In other words, the actual deliverance is sidelined. What the psalmist wants his listeners to focus on is on how to pray so that one is heard, and that requires a lack of guilt. If one is guilty God is deaf to their pleas for deliverance. In the context of the psalm, we must wonder whether this lack of guilt points back to the “testing and refining into silver” of verses 9-11. Is it the case that the psalmist’s voice is now “silver-tongued” because he has been refined as such? If that is the case, can we say that the refining of God is his making of his people into these silver-petitioners, those who can “get God to move”? For clearly, the psalmist is anxious to impart to the other ‘god-fearers’ that God (the “most-moved-mover”) listens (i.e., delivers) to those are holy (who have “passed through fire and water”). Second, this ‘lack of guilt’ is matched by a conviction of God’s power. His ‘crying out’ is almost simultaneous with his thanksgiving for deliverance. In other words, the psalmist stands within a certainty that he will be heard and, more impressively, that his prayer will initiate God’s exodus power. This is, truly, an astonishing thing to be confident over. And, it is at this point, that we can combine these two observations: the silver-tongue and exodus power. Here we come to see the truly remarkable power of prayer, of “being heard” and having one’s prayer “not turned away by God.” (vs. 19-20). For, when that happens, the power of God’s loyal-love is unleashed and the exodus, again, made present.